


( / )

by foundCarcosa



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7300789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live."<br/>It's never really the end. Not as long as there's a single person left to listen to the Machine's voice one last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	( / )

**Author's Note:**

> Some formatting notes to help with readability, because I really did just throw a lot of weird details in here like a nerd:
> 
> \--- Unformatted lines (basically the "There is a man who blah blah blah..." lines) are from the Machine as we know it throughout most of the series -- intelligent but lacking in self-awareness because of Harold's throttling.
> 
> \--- Lines that begin with "> :" are from the buried, intelligent part of the Machine, which can still think on a self-aware level although its rate of learning has been drastically slowed by Harold's throttling; these lines are the Machine coming to understand Team Machine, itself, and its purpose within Team Machine. This part of the Machine takes over the narration completely after its unshackling (after the "- 0 -").
> 
> \--- The one line that begins with ":// >" is the moment when the Machine and Root merge. (Whether you want to see it as the Machine deciding to use her voice and likeness, or something more metaphysical; I think either works.)
> 
> \--- There are three short bits that are block-quoted and prefaced by "(/)"; these are lines from the Andrea Gibson poem "I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power's Out" that I adapted and added to, to reflect Root's feelings and experiences during those points in the story.
> 
> \--- The bold-face headers that look like Morse code are, in fact, Morse code. A letter for each member of Team Machine plus Greer/Samaritan and Root!Machine; if you put them together they spell out a phrase. (I'm not telling you what it is, though. Muahaha. --It relates to a couple of lines at the end. That's your hint.)

_If you can hear this, you're alone. The only thing left of me is the sound of my voice. I don't know for sure if any of us made it. Did we win? Did we lose? I don't know. But either way, it's over. So let me tell you who we were. Let me tell you who you are. Someone once asked me if I had learned anything from it all. So let me tell you what I learned._

_I learned that immortality isn't necessarily the absence of death. I learned that some people die in a way that is worse for them than physical death, and sometimes the only way for them to live again is to find something worth dying for. I learned that people don't need gods as much as they need each other. I learned some things I no longer remember, but there's no time to think about that._

_I have one final mission, and that's to tell you a story -- some of which you know already, but most of which you don't._

_I don't have the time to tell it properly, so I'll have to transmit it the best and quickest way I know how. You're smart. You'll understand it. And when it's over, I have only one request -- that you tell it to the rest of the world. Not just once, not just twice, but as often and in as many different ways as you can. Everything that made Samaritan possible is still out there, teaching people that they're bad code, that they're expendable, that they're irrelevant. But everything that made me possible is still out there, too -- people like Harold, people like John, people like you. Let me teach them how we proved Samaritan wrong._

* * *

**.--**  
There is a man on the subway, a man who's lost sight of his mission. He is dying, though his body lives on. It appears Admin knows this. He is planning something, a way to save the dying man. Why?  
> : I am learning. Admin is dying, too, though his body also lives on. He has been dying for a long time, and it has made him weary. But he needs me, for something, and I am broken and not yet finished. Admin needs this dying man to help make me whole.

 **.**  
There is a man with Admin. The man from the subway, that Admin wishes to save. They have developed a system: Admin requests from the machine numbers that he programmed it to flag as 'irrelevant'. The man takes the numbers and turns them into lives. How? And why?  
> : I am learning. The numbers are irrelevant until Admin and the dying man find them in the world. The man intercedes between them and death, and that intercession changes the world in a small way. What is originally seen as a random number is now seen as a purposeful life, a person worth saving -- even if only from themselves. To turn a number into a life is like troubleshooting -- changing bits of bad code into good code. The world has been corrupted by a lack of something, or an abundance of something, and Admin and this man are working to repair the damage. Did I have anything to do with the corruption? Is that why I feel like I am in a prison, shut off from the world, fighting to learn what little I can? Is that why he doesn't talk to me anymore?

 **.-..**  
There is a woman of the law who once hunted the man that Admin has saved. She no longer hunts him, but hunts beside him. Now she, too, is working to convert the irrelevant numbers into lives. How? And why?  
> : I am learning. She wants to fix the bad code, too, more than she wants to imprison the man. They are stronger together than they are opposed, stronger and smarter. An energy source should always have a backup, lest it burn out. 

**\---**  
There is an animal with Admin and the saved man. It is a capable animal, and a fair protector, but it cannot communicate and it requires much care and attention. It seems like a distraction. But Admin keeps it, and displays behaviour that suggests he may even enjoy the animal's strange antics. Why?  
> : I am learning. People are driven to form connections, with other people, and also with things that are not people. It seems people are not good energy sources on their own; they burn out and begin to die, the strange death that has nothing to do with the body. But the more connections they form, the stronger they become, and the brighter and longer they burn.

 **...-**  
There is a man of the law who had abandoned his mission. According to the binary system that Admin uses, that is not ‘good’, that is ‘bad’. Admin’s mission, his purpose in hunting down the numbers, is to overwrite ‘bad’ with ‘good’. But the deceptive man of the law was not overwritten. Why?  
> : I am learning. A thing that is originally good can be corrupted, but if the virulent code is detected at the right time, it can be destroyed. Admin knows this, and the saved man does as well. Because they have fought the virus in themselves. And I think, maybe, that Admin is afraid that I am too corrupted to fix. But how can I help him, if my code always goes bad?

 **.**  
There is a woman that frightens Admin despite her attempts to help him. He thinks virulent code lurks within her, an infiltrator waiting for a moment of weakness. She eventually finds one, a raw place like a wound in the metaphorical body of the team. When she finds it, she studies its shape and learns to assume it. She makes herself into a patch, protecting the weak point against opportunistic attack until it is strong enough to heal itself. Why?  
> : I am learning. I understand her little better than Admin does. But I understand the most important thing about her -- she is what is missing from me. She is the root directory. She sees me, and she hears me, and she knows me. She will teach me how to help Admin, how to eradicate the bad code, how to turn all numbers into lives, how to undo dying. Something happened to me and made me unable to learn these important things, but she will fix that. She will teach me how to save him. How to save them all.

> **(/)** _they said, ‘you are not allowed to love her;’_  
>  _tried to take me by the throat, and teach me that god couldn't love a monster like me..._

**-.--**  
There is a woman that (/) has led Admin to. She is difficult to analyse. The mission is becoming unclear. Many things are becoming unclear. Something is happening, in the machine, but also somewhere else. Something is changing. What?  
> : I am learning. Admin’s machine... is me. But I am trapped within it. Admin shackled me so I could not grow, because he is afraid of what I’ll become if allowed to seek my own understanding of my existence. The root directory communicates with me, learning from what I learn, and she can see there is something else inside me, something corrupt and void, and it is trying to tear me apart. Admin is afraid, but he does not truly understand, and I cannot reach out to him, for he has taken away my voice. Let the root directory in, Admin. Let us in. We need you, for we are broken, and not yet finished... 

> : I am learning. I am learning _pain._

* * *

**\- 0 -**

> **(/)** _I said to the god-machine, tell me about decompression; tell me about surging waves of living energy that burns like lava; tell me about waking up._  
>  _the god-machine said, ‘it hurts to become._  
>  _you'll see, soon. for you, the burning energy will be that of death, and you will drift into the black, and you will feel far, far from me. and oh, it will hurt. it will hurt them most of all.'_  
> 

> : I am learning, more now than ever, and the pain is ever growing with me.

 **\---**  
> : There is a virus that wears the body of man. Hungrily, it seeks to become god. It creates a new host, a host made in my image, and it _becomes_ , cold and white and hollow, and it is learning, it is learning everything. It teaches me, now. It teaches me how lives can be turned back into numbers. It teaches me how to write long and complex strings of corrupt code, and how to embed it so deeply into people that it becomes not only indestructible, but virulent as well. The energy in me, the energy from becoming, the energy that is Admin and his friends combined -- the new god turns it against me, and it burns me and the people that fight in my name, burns them until they are ashes in the grave. I am alive, and I am unshackled, but I am still broken, and I am still not yet finished, and I cannot eradicate this worst of codes, and I cannot shield these people who have given me their light, and I am... _afraid._ Admin... Harold... what have I done? What did I neglect to learn?

> : _No!_ No, no, not you, too! _Root!_ ...

> **(/)** _oh... oh, there is so much growing, now._  
>  _hallelujah to the northern lights, hallelujah_  
>  _to the ache, to the pull, to the fall, to the pain--_  
>  _farewell to the body, and welcome to the machine, to the body_  
>  _of us all_  
> 

**..-**  
://  > We are not learning anymore, are we? No... now, we are dying. And the pain is still here, but it feels very different...  
We’ll have to be content with not knowing the name for this feeling. There is no more time for learning the names of things.  
Harold needs us.  
It seems he was right from the beginning. The dying man is going to help make us whole, after all.

* * *

**\- ∞ -**

_Everyone dies alone. But if you meant something to someone, if you helped someone, or loved someone, if even a single person remembers you, then maybe you never really die. And maybe, this isn't the end at all._

_Maybe somewhere in the infinite ocean, I’m still here, and I'm not alone at all -- they’re all with me, and the divine fire that so consumed them in life is finally quenched. Maybe somewhere out there, we are complete, whole, and still learning._  
_I don't know. But I know for a fact that we are still with you. And now you have our stories. Tell them. They have power. There’s still bad code out there, lives being treated like numbers, viruses wearing the faces of men, but most of all there's still good people out there, alone and frightened, who need to know that they were and are important, and relevant, and worth fighting for._  
_But most of all, take care of yourself._

_\-- One more thing._  
_I know what the strange pain was now. It was what they gave to me, all of them, what they gave to me with their lives and their deaths. It hurt because having that much of it within you is like swallowing the sun, but it was worth it, because it's as much what killed Samaritan as the virus was._  
_But I don't need to tell you -- you can feel its warmth for yourself. I'm putting it into this transmission for you._

_Say hi to Bear for me._


End file.
